Loco Lacrimae
by Smarty Cat
Summary: [Oneshot] Heero opens up to Relena when they meet after a memorial service, and together they realize there are alternatives to tears. 1xR LIME Heed the M rating and read the author's notes. ALL comments and criticisms are welcome.


**Please note: As of November 2011, ALL NEW FICS unrelated to previously posted works will be posted under the name Inverse Calico. A link is on my author profile.**

My second entry in the 2006 Church of Lemons over on the Love Reflection II mailing list and another long-completed fic that I had forgotten to post here. Of course, this one has the bonus excuse that I had to cut out the adult content first, and that takes some motivation after going through all of the trouble to write it.

_Nevertheless, please heed the M rating!_ This fic does contain content of a sexual nature although it has been edited to comply with FFN regulations (over 1000 words gone bye-bye). A link to the full version is in my profile or you can read it at Blissful Ignorance or AO3.

**Disclaimer****:** Gundam Wing is owned by Sunrise and Sotsu Agency and distributed in America exclusively under license by Bandai Entertainment. If I owned Gundam Wing it would have deteriorated into melodramatic shoujo complete with bubbles and sparkles ten minutes into the first episode. 'Cause I'm fluffy like that.

**Completed:** March 13, 2006

_A big thank you for help with the Latin title (it translates to "Instead of Tears") goes out to esotaria!_

**Loco Lacrimae**

by  
**Smarty Cat**

Relena Darlian's practical, low-heeled shoes made only the faintest of scuffing sounds as she strode leisurely down the colonnaded verandah running the perimeter of the war memorial museum. The ceiling high overhead and the elegant concrete pillars that three of her could not have put their arms around did little to block the breeze coming off of the ocean, and her unbound hair flowed across her arms and shoulders. She shivered. She had foregone her standard diplomatic suit in favor of a calf length sundress, a decision she was starting to regret. The wind smelled of rain, not merely saltwater, and that gray rain clouds were gathering was all too evident.

Any other day sunlight would have been streaming through the pillars, highlighting the carefully done faux marbling into shimmering whorls of silver on palest gray and creating distinct bars of light and dark across the verandah floor. The massing clouds, however, dulled everything into a muted yet somehow luminous silver. A few defiant rays of light still broke through the sky but were diffused into the eerie glow so common before a storm.

She scanned the vista as she strolled along, but the scene was perfectly calm and still. Rows and rows of white markers stretched off to the very ends of the memorial grounds, and the water of the sea showed dark against the horizon beyond the stone wall that blocked passage to the bluffs. She could hear birdsong, but the birds had themselves well hidden. The open field certainly held no hint of anything larger than a bird moving about nearby, and she was looking for a man who would only wait for her for so long before leaving.

The dark promise of rain had ended the memorial service prematurely, and the grounds had quickly emptied of the requisite diplomats, reporters, and bereaved. Relena, however, had not been so eager to leave immediately and had quietly slipped into a restroom until the rest of her party departed under the assumption that she had already left. A quick call to her chauffeur had freed up at least an hour's time to accomplish her objectives.

Relena raised her hands above her head, brandishing a bouquet of roses in her left and clutching a jumble of hair pins in her right, and arched her back with a luxuriously satisfying pop because there appeared to be no one around to witness the indignity of one foreign minister attempting to work the kinks out of her back as she walked. (Multitasking was a political specialty after all.) She saw him while in mid-stretch. Relena's stride faltered but it did not break, and because he was facing the other way, she lowered her arms slowly, drawing out the pleasurable throb of newly loosened muscles.

He stood with his back to one of the columns, staring out over the grounds. Perhaps he relished the quiet as she did, or perhaps he relived memories that life ordinarily kept boxed up and with good reason. How many of those markers had he caused?

She paused, raking her eyes over his figure and trying to judge his mood. Heero was dressed simply but appropriately for the memorial service in neatly pressed black slacks and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing rough, dark arms. Standing there in the strange, dappled gray light before the onset of the rain with the wind tugging at his dark hair, he looked like a brooding Byronic hero come to life until she got to his feet. His feet were bare on the stone floor, and a cursory glance around their immediate vicinity revealed his shoes set neatly beside the museum wall.

A bittersweet smile curled her lips. "I thought I might find you here."

He gave no indication of hearing her, but after her announcement of her presence she knew she could advance without fear. Heero had probably been aware of her approach long before she reached him, but Relena had learned from her interactions with mild-mannered Quatre not to slip up on an ex-Gundam pilot and certainly not to touch one without first making absolutely certain that he knew she was there.

Impulsively she slipped her own shoes off of her feet, leaving them sitting neatly in the center of the verandah as she went to him. Relena stood silently at his side for a long moment, sweeping her gaze once again across the memorial field and toying with the hairpins in her hand. She had attempted to take a life once and had failed. Heero had not been so fortunate. What did he see in the field?

Her eyes trailed back to his face from beneath lowered lashes, but she did not study him openly. His impassive face could have been carved from the same concrete blocks as the pillar he leaned against. It possessed the same cold, inflexible beauty of the finest classical sculpture. Only the way his eyes narrowed minutely when the wind blew his hair into his face and the gentle bob of his Adam's apple as he swallowed revealed that he was even alive.

"Do you ever cry?" Relena murmured, still facing the green and white expanse of the memorial grounds but surreptitiously watching for his reaction.

His eyes flickered to her, and she took that as her cue to raise her head, gazing at him calmly. If the rain had not been coming and if her hands had not been full, she would have folded them together and been prepared to wait him out. As important as he was, however, Heero was not her only objective. In order to speed up the process of getting Heero to give vent to his emotions, Relena would have to initiate physical contact.

She stepped forward and thrust her right hand into the air between, the collection of hairpins sticking partway out of her fist. Heero blinked at her outstretched hand and very slowly slid his eyes to her face. She widened her eyes and lifted her chin, gesturing for him to take them, and Heero very slowly took the pins from her, his gaze wary.

"I didn't demand that you cry right here and now, Heero. I asked if you ever did."

With her newly free hand, Relena reached up and touched the hard, unrelenting curve of his cheek. He flinched minutely at her touch but did not pull away, and she slid her fingers up behind his ear, caressing his cheekbone with her thumb.

"It's all right to cry sometimes, Heero. Everyone is entitled to it occasionally."

His hand shot up and closed around her wrist before the final syllables could even leave her mouth, and he glared at her down the length of her arm. Relena refused to be cowed by the warning in his eyes and met his gaze squarely, her own expression calm and unruffled. She had hit a nerve and that was a good sign.

The severe lines of Heero's face softened under her peaceful scrutiny. He pulled her hand away from his face but did not release it. Instead he lowered their upraised arms to their sides so that their conjoined hands dangled between them. To say that he forced them would be inaccurate because Relena put up no resistance, and the moment that their tense stance was broken his harsh grip on her wrist had loosened. His hand slid down her loosely curled fist, his calluses lightly scraping her knuckles, and he turned her hand over and twined his fingers through hers. His larger, darker hand enveloped her smaller, lighter one, and Relena slowly returned the gesture, tightening her grip around his hand.

A suspicious heat suffused her cheeks, and Relena pressed her lips together anxiously before soothing them with her tongue. She watched Heero stuff her jumble of hair pins into his pocket, but he did not look at her as he did it, and she found that she could not stare at him quite so boldly with the heat of his palm pressing against hers. Relena brushed a lock of windblown hair out of her face and slumped against the side of the column. Although their interlaced hands were their only physical link, she remained highly conscious of his thoroughly male body such a short distance away and wondered if he suffered from a heightened awareness of her as well. If so, she wondered if he considered her a tolerated annoyance or a comfort. Was it so much to want those who had found so much misery in the war to find happiness after it?

Relena raised her face to the darkening sky and closed her eyes. She could pretend that the prickle in her eyes was due to the wind. An echo of the bagpipes from the memorial service sounded in her mind and faded. Heero was a link to her past, a past she sometimes wished she could forget if she could not change it. In the divine scheme of things, she had lost her father in exchange for the man at her side. Had it been a fair trade? And with all the things that Heero had been forced to give up and all the horrible things he had done because he was the only one who could or would, she must be a poor consolation if he would even choose to accept her.

Yet the day he came into her life was the day that both of their lives changed irrevocably. Heero had been a catalyst propelling her from what she had been to what she must be. Like no one else still living, his presence in her life bridged the naive girl she had been and the self-composed diplomat she was forced to become. Her lips quirked as she recalled what she had been to him. First an obstacle to the mission to be eliminated at all costs; next an annoyance; then a symbol of what could be; finally an equal. Most importantly, somewhere along the line, she had become a person to him. Someone to him.

"Why don't you cry?"

Relena stirred slowly, forcing her mind back from where it had wandered. His question was blunt and unexpected, much like Heero himself generally was, but it did not seem like an attempt to antagonize her. His tone had been genuinely curious, concerned if she allowed herself to indulge in flights of fancy. Relena rocked back on her heels and realized with a start that she had been fiddling with his fingers, a nervous habit acquired from nearly always having a pen in her hand.

She cleared her throat, feeling her cheeks heat once again. "It's very difficult to find enough time alone during which to cry. Tears are a luxury I can't afford anymore. I have to be strong for everyone else." She shrugged. "Besides I've cried too much. I don't need to anymore."

There was a strange weight to the silence as he processed her answer, and she forced herself into patience, carefully judging the state of the clouds blocking out the sky.

"Liar," Heero stated finally.

Her breath left her in a rush, and she jerked up her head and glared at him. "I did not come here to talk about myself. I came for you."

"Why?"

Relena suppressed an exasperated snort. That certainly was a weighted question. She wondered if he realized just how heavy it was. He had to know though or he would not have asked it.

She turned their interlaced hands over and extended them in the air in front of them, catching his gaze and holding it. "Someone has to care about you."

Heero responded with a brief, curt shake of his head. His mouth opened, but Relena did not give him the opportunity to speak.

"Don't you dare imply that you are in some way not worthy of my affection and concern! I'm as well suited for the task as anyone," she persisted. "Do you have any objections to my presence?"

"You're free to leave any time you wish."

"That wasn't what I asked you!"

"You ask too much," Heero ground out, shaking his head again. "You ask for forgiveness, you ask for permission, you ask how I feel."

Relena stared at him in disbelief. "Dear God, Heero, that's all just common courtesy! I won't stop, Heero. I won't ignore you, I won't pretend not to care, I won't treat you any differently than I do anyone else!"

"But you do," he mumbled.

Her head whipped toward him and she stepped closer impulsively, strands of her hair sliding along his arm. "What?"

"You do treat me differently," Heero responded, his tone quiet and strangely intimate.

He tugged their hands up to eye level, forcing her closer again, and turned his head to stare at her directly for the first time since she had arrived. Relena's breath hitched in her throat. The silver flecks in his eyes were so pretty, and she could feel the heat of his body radiating through the thin material of her sundress. Her body slowly rocked forward, drawn to him like a magnet to its opposite pole.

Lightning flashed in the distance over his shoulder, and she started. Her eyes flickered away from his and fluttered nervously around, looking anywhere but at him. Her lips firmed. The reprieve from his intense gaze restored her courage. Relena would be stubborn to the last, and if she was going down then he would too.

"You treat me differently too."

She had meant it as a challenge, something to put him on the defensive, but his cheek ticked suspiciously. Heero turned away again and simply replied, "I know."

Relena's eyes widened and then narrowed as thunder rumbled overhead. "You're impossible," she huffed, tugging at her hand but Heero refused to let go.

She was absolutely certain a smile played about his lips then, and he said, "I know that too."

Relena restrained the urge to stomp her foot only by a great force of will and stared out across the memorial grounds. The last few defiant shafts of sunlight had been swallowed by the building rain clouds, and her grip tightened around the bouquet of roses in her left hand. Time was slipping away from her. She looked at the rows upon rows of white markers, a special few waiting to be adorned by the blossoms she carried, and then back to the young man standing beside her. She would not demand or even ask that he walk among the markers of death. Not again. Not anymore.

Relena swallowed and weighed the options for extricating her hand. The direct approach seemed like the best method so she unlaced her fingers from his and pulled away sharply. However, it took quite a bit of effort and maneuvering to get Heero to release her hand. To say that he seemed strangely reluctant to do so would have been an understatement; if the way he kept tugging her off balance was any indication he was taking an impish delight in holding her captive.

She stumbled a bit when he finally let go and glanced back at him as she stepped to the edge of the verandah. Heero was watching her curiously, and his brows arched as she looked at him. Relena nodded at him to show that she was not angry, turned, and hopped the short distance to the ground.

She strode down the long green line with the cool grass tickling her bare feet. It was stretching the bounds of propriety, but Heero was the only one there to see it and he was barefoot too. Her fingers curled restlessly around the small bunch of roses. She had left the thorns, and several small scratches already adored her hands, but they were part of the ritual. It was not the first such journey she had made, although it was the first without shoes.

Relena knew the way and carefully counted off a mental grid with each marker she passed. Some markers did not bear flowers at her approach, but they did at her passing. She chose them by how bare and neglected they appeared, swept her fingers briefly over the inscriptions of names she did not know, and put a single rose in their empty holders. During one such stop, she noticed movement in the periphery of her vision and turned her head. Heero followed slowly behind, his hands shoved into his pockets.

By the time she reached the marker that was her intended destination, a light but steady rain had begun to fall and Heero was right behind her. Relena kneeled in the grass in front of the marker, and he stood silently a pace away. She did not run her hands across its letters as she had the others. She did not need to. Unlike the others, she knew exactly whom the marker was intended to represent. Unlike the others, it was already covered with flowers. The rain fell harder, weighting her hair and clothes and dripping down her skin, but still she kneeled, head bowed, gazing at the inscription on the marker.

Hesitant fingertips touched the top of her head. "Are you-"

"I'm fine," Relena interrupted. She tilted her head back. "You didn't expect him to be here, did you? It's true he didn't die in the war, but you can't say he wasn't a casualty of it."

"I'm sorry."

Her lips trembled, but she neither smiled nor burst into tears. Instead she glanced at the rose clenched in her hand before offering it to him.

"Would you like a flower?"

She had to look absurd, kneeling in the mud puddles forming at his feet and offering him a flower, but to his credit Heero did not snort or recoil or do anything that most men would do.

"It's for him though, isn't it?"

Relena retracted the rose and brushed the petals against her cheek and over her lips. She closed her eyes and spoke from behind the petals, "Flowers do more good for the living than for the dead, don't they? Father won't mind. He has enough already as you can see, and he gets plenty at the burial plot at home. He doesn't need one more here."

She opened her eyes and stared at him silently for a long moment before touching the wrist of the hand atop her hair. "Is there no one you would cry for?" she asked with all the compassion and understanding she could muster, feeling a suspicious prickle once again in her own eyes.

Relena saw Heero appear to unexpectedly stop breathing under her expectant, glittering gaze. He blinked a few times rapidly but was soon composed enough to reply, "No one who would be honored here."

"Ah, but that is where you are wrong," Relena murmured so lowly that Heero could barely hear it and had to lean farther over her.

She seized the opportunity and surged to her feet in one fluid movement, leaving the rose behind in the grass and sending Heero stumbling back. Relena wrapped her arms around his neck, and one hand cradled the back of his head as she burrowed her face against his shoulder. She waited, breathing him in, his scent like rain and something distinctly Heero, her breath warming his clammy skin.

His arms slowly came up around her, holding her as if she was something fragile and would easily break if he gripped her too hard. Relena whispered a reassurance against his neck, and his arms tightened immediately. He clutched her to him, their bodies pressed seamlessly together with the aid of their sodden clothes.

Water ran off his face onto hers, but it was impossible to say whether the liquid was rain or tears until she tasted the salt on his lips. Even then she was not sure if they were his tears or her own. One moment he was clinging to her as if she was a lifeline; the next he was kissing her. His lips raked across hers, and she felt the edges of his teeth. The kiss was hard and desperate, and she could feel the coiled tension in him where her hands clutched his shoulders. Relena bit back a moan and shivered quite noticeably in his arms.

Heero immediately pulled away, but she was gratified to see that he appeared to have no intentions of apologizing for his actions. Instead his eyes flicked quickly but openly down the length of her body. Her soaked dress did little to hide it, and his nostrils flared.

"You're cold. We should go back."

A little bubble of warmth formed inside her chest as she stooped quickly to collect the abandoned flower. "I hope you would have liked him, Father," she whispered to the marker.

She rose to her feet, caught Heero's hand, and tugged. "It can wait. There's somewhere you need to go first."

"No, Relena, we should go back." His eyes again flicked quickly up and down her figure.

Relena stepped to his side and threaded her arm through his. She smiled up at him and murmured, "Trust me."

Heero walked with her farther into the memorial grounds as the rain grew heavier. A particularly loud clap of thunder made Relena jump with surprise and dig her nails into his arm. She immediately laughed at the absurdity of her reaction, and they ran together toward the low mound of earth that she indicated.

Without breaking her stride, Relena bounded down a set of stone steps leading into the earth, dragging Heero behind her. Their bare feet skittered on the wet rock, and the pair careened into the small memorial chamber. Relena stopped short, out of breath from the run, and Heero crashed into her back. She staggered, but neither lost their balance, and her grip on him had not loosened.

Heero stared at the room into which she had led him, his hand still squeezing the curve of her hip where he had steadied her. His gaze analyzed the small, low-ceilinged room with its slate tile floors and marbled walls that seemed to run and shimmer with light and color. Hidden recessed lighting and a backlit sky mural on the ceiling added to the serene ambiance. Two large, rounded benches were set around a circular mosaic in the floor in the center of the room, and two large vases filled with flowers blanked the benches in the back.

"What is this?"

"Treize believed very strongly in doing proper honor to the dead. That's why all the markers outside have the names of the war dead. Many memorials just have the markers without names. This room is a memorial for the nameless. Not just for unknown soldiers but for all who died in the war without their names being known or recorded," Relena answered, pointing to the inscription in the mosaic. She read it aloud, "'Anonymous is not unremembered.'"

She handed the rose to him. He stared at the scratches on her fingers, and she wanted to hide them. A small bit of blood welled up on his own finger near his cuticle, and Relena gestured vaguely as she explained, "It somehow doesn't seem right or fair to use thornless roses to honor them. The physical pain is a reflection of the emotional pain of loss and remembrance. "

"What do I do with it?"

"There. Put it there with the others." She motioned to the vases at the back of the room. "And remember."

Heero walked over and inserted the rose as she directed, staring down at it among all the other flowers. Relena sat down on the edge of one of the benches behind him.

"Would you mind telling me about them, Heero?" she asked quietly. "The people you could cry for."

He stood silently facing away from her, and she waited. She knew enough to wait for him, knew that ultimately she would have to let him proceed at his own pace. She listened to the rain spilling through the artfully tiled drainage channels running the perimeter of the room, and Heero came to sit down beside her without a word. Their shoulders nearly touched, and she stared at her bare feet on the floor and did not look at him.

He started slowly, but his voice was completely level as he listed individuals. "My parents. I don't remember them, but I suppose they must have died. Odin Lowe. He raised me. He was an assassin."

Relena blinked.

"He taught me most of the important stuff. How to read and write. Fighting, medicine, all kinds of weapons and machines. Not mobile suits though. That was Dr. J's area, and I guess I should include him too. J was better than he had to be. Then there was this little girl and her dog. I killed her. I killed both of them."

Relena inhaled sharply at the sorrow and self-loathing in his voice. Heero's hands clenched into fists on his thighs. "I didn't mean to kill her. I screwed up. I set explosives where I shouldn't have and knocked a mobile suit into a residential complex. I didn't mean to kill her," he repeated. "I didn't want to kill her. She gave me a flower too and asked me if I was lost."

He stopped and looked at Relena, his eyes hard and bright. She almost could not bear to look at him but neither could she bear to look away.

"Were you lost?" she whispered.

A strange, hollow expression flickered across his face. "I've been lost since the day I was born."

Relena could feel the significance echoing behind the words. They must have been the same ones that he had given the first girl to give him flowers. She reached out, placed both her hands over his in his lap, and leaned slowly into him, pressing her forehead against his.

"It's all right to cry, Heero," she said again. "If not for them then for yourself. Who you were and who you could have been had to die in order for you to become who you are. It's all right to mourn that."

As she said the words she knew that she was speaking for herself as much as for him. She was speaking for everyone really, because who had never suffered? Who had never hurt? Who had never filled a position they would not have chosen for themselves?

His eyes glittered, and his breathing was ragged. He exhaled harshly against her mouth, and she pressed her forehead more firmly against his, anchoring him to her and to the present. Their noses brushed together, followed by their lips. The pressure of his mouth on hers started out soft and feather light, just the barest teasing hint of sensation. It grew stronger and firmer, and her eyes fell closed, shutting out the sight of his intense, beautiful eyes made dark by his dilated pupils but shimmering with unshed tears.

Being unable to see him only heightened her other senses' awareness of him. She heard each breath he took and each small sound of pleasure he made as she touched him. She felt his pulse pounding through his body and the gentle trembling of his hands as he stroked her hair away from her face. She smelled the lingering traces of aftershave on his skin that not even the fresh crisp of ozone could mask. She tasted the secret salt tang of tears on his lips again and, when he parted his lips at her urging, she tasted the persistent flavor of coffee still clinging to the silken insides of his mouth.

They clung to one another and stroked hands down willing bodies with increasing urgency. Touch was comforting, but most of all it was validation. Heero needed to prove to himself that he was still alive and could still feel. Relena needed to prove to herself that she was still free to choose and that everything leading up to that moment had been worth it.

Heero dragged his mouth away from hers with a sharp tug to her lower lip and began trailing open-mouthed kisses across her jaw line and down her neck. Relena's head fell back, giving him greater access to the sensitive skin of her throat, and her fingers clenched in his hair. Her eyes slipped open, and she gazed dazedly up at the cloud ceiling as his ministrations wreaked havoc on her senses. The tears still clinging stubbornly to her lashes broke the scene into rainbow fractals, creating a shifting kaleidoscope of color in her vision.

Their soaked clothes provided little barrier to seeking hands, and Relena shivered again from anticipation and a lingering wet chill as Heero traced his fingertips along her ribcage up to her breasts. He scuffed his hands against her, the friction creating heat, and his fingers were already rising to work at the buttons of her sundress as he muttered against the hollow of her throat, "You're cold."

"Not for long," she replied in a husky murmur, tugging his shirt free of his slacks forcefully before sliding her hands underneath. She sighed in satisfaction and skimmed her nails up his back, listening with delight to his moan of pleasure. The first touch on unexplored skin was hers. However, Relena was not content to blindly map the planes of his torso when an uninterrupted visual seemed so much more appealing.

She began fumbling with his belt, but the wet leather soon proved uncooperative. She hissed with frustration, and Heero left off marking the upper skin of her breasts with his teeth in order to help her. She quickly left him to it, abandoning the fight with his belt in order to finish wriggling out of her own dress before Heero rendered it un-wearable in his enthusiasm. She had slipped off her bra as well and was reaching for her panties when Heero's hand on her thigh stopped her.

"Relena, I don't have a condom. And there is no way going down on you is going to be enough."

Relena was struck speechless for a moment, unable to decide whether to be touched by his concern or to summarily throw herself at him for the sheer eroticism of his second remark. She settled on a mix of both, framing his face with her hands and nipping at his lips as she purred, "Have I ever told you how wonderful it is that you're always so protective? You needn't worry on that account though. Keeping my cycles suppressed but regular makes for much easier travel."

"Is this the place then?" Heero forged on stoically. "It can't be what you wanted."

"No silk sheets, flower petals, chocolate, or bedroom music, you mean?" Relena chuckled. "Perhaps it would seem degrading and disrespectful to the rest of the world, but I think this works for us. We met because of the war, and a memorial is more than a place to honor the dead. It is an affirmation of a life that was lived. What could be more life affirming than the act that leads to procreation?"

"Except in this case there will be no procreating," he interjected with sudden dry wit.

"Well, there is always that percentage failure rate," Relena responded wryly and stroked his cheeks. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, remember? Not anymore. You're free now. Do you want this?"

He arched one sardonic brow and glanced down. "Isn't it obvious? I don't want an out, Relena; I want an in. I want to feel every inch of you. But do you really want this?" he turned her words back on her. He left unspoken the underlying question 'do you really want me?' but both of them knew it was part of the equation.

Relena's eyes crinkled with amusement and she looked at him with a wry, crooked smile. "Yes, please."

And to her amazement Heero grinned back. The diplomatic master of words was struck dumb at the rare beauty of the sight but found that she did not mind a bit. She had no need for speech when her mouth was otherwise occupied by more pleasant endeavors.

Relena pulled away from the pleasures of Heero's lips and teeth and tongue and sent soft, fluttering hands down his body. She wanted to be exceptionally gentle with him just once because he had never had enough people be gentle with him.

x_x_x_x_x

Relena chuckled weakly as she stroked his hair. "That was amazing."

"Much more productive than crying," Heero agreed, nuzzling the curve of her jaw.

"Don't start. There's still no shame in it." She laid her head against his shoulder and lightly traced a finger along his pectoral. "Does this mean we won't have to sneak away and wait on each other anymore? That we'll be able to go to events together now?"

He laid his head atop hers. "Maybe."

She grumbled but did not move until he urged her to get up several minutes later. Together they collected their scattered clothes, and Heero helped Relena gather her hair into a bedraggled bun and secure it with the pins he had put in his pocket. The rain had passed and the sun was shining when they emerged from the memorial chamber, but Relena grimaced with distaste as they began the muddy trek back to the museum.

Heero stopped suddenly in front of her, and she almost ran into him. He bent down, offering her his back, and after a moment's hesitation she climbed on. Her weight did not appear to slow him in the least nor did he appear to have her aversion to walking through the muddiest patches on a direct path for the war memorial museum. She rested her chin comfortably on his shoulder, the gentle strokes of his thumbs on her legs and the rhythm of his stride lulling her into a doze.

As her consciousness faded into light slumber, she felt him lean his head against hers, and she thought she heard him say under his breath, "I would cry for you too. I'd kill whoever hurt you, but I'd cry for you."


End file.
